Enron The Smartest People In The Room Essay

The movie, Enron, the Smartest People in the Room, is a documentary that unfolds the story behind the biggest corporate bankruptcy in world history. The real life interviews with people involved in the Enron crash movie outlines the elements of the process of the company failure, as it was happening from the top of the corporation to the bottom. The executive level managers created an organizational culture supporting unethical behavior which lead the lower level employees to obey the laws and act unethically in their process of reaching the company goals and objectives. The Enron example illuminates the importance of appropriate organizational behavior and points out to the ethical part of it. This essay argues that, Enron, the Smartest People in the Room, displays how through different leadership styles the upper management is …show more content…
Cult leadership suggests that the leader is seen as infallible and any action against him is a subject to punishment. Enron leadership had a self-schema reflecting a propensity toward authorization control (Murphy & Ensher, 2008). Managers who either questioned the organization’s accounting practices or raised their concerns at meetings never had a clear answers and were always left with uncertainty. In most cases, they experienced revenge by the top managers as their staff was removed from beneath them and reassigned to other units (Swartz & Watkins, 2004). The cultic dynamic was also shown when Enron’s leadership was protecting their top management from criticism inside and outside the organization. For example, the movie shows how a 2001 meeting was made to convince workers about the future, Ken Lay proclaimed his trust in Andy Fastow, despite the fact that Andy lost almost a billion dollars mismanaging some partnerships. Most of the top leaders were similarly insulated from the consequences of their actions (Murphy & Ensher,